Background
The modern ‘omics era has led to a gap between a generation of biotech leaders with experience in healthcare product development and the next generation of scientists and engineers who know how to leverage the power of computational methods and big data. We bridge that gap via our product development experience, our team building experience, and our technical expertise.
We are experienced wet lab + computational “hybrid” scientists who work closely with founders to go from vision to design and execution of scientific strategies that will enable the next round of fundraising and create additional value opportunities. We can help design & execute foundational experiments, build computational biology teams, and get your drug or diagnostic to the clinic as efficiently as possible. Our primary goal is to help startups succeed through a common sense approach, robust scientific and engineering practices, and promoting capital efficiency.
We focus primarily on seed-stage startups but are also happy to work with larger companies (e.g., if they have ideas for new products or applications but may not have the resources to start making it happen). Our client portfolio includes therapeutics companies leveraging single-cell, synthetic biology, and microfluidics approaches, but we can work with biotech companies across many application spaces.
Mission & motivation
short term: To help startups succeed, to build teams and get stuff done. (We just like helping startups)
long term: We aim to increase the efficiency of drug & diagnostic development.
Our name
Init is short for initialize /iˈniSHəˌlīz/ -
to put in a condition appropriate to the start of a project or operation.
It is based on the first process run by an operating system (also the initialization function in the Python class constructor).
Leadership
Oliver Zill - Founder & Principal
Oliver is a Science & Technology leader driven to make better life science products to improve patient outcomes and people's lives. Held leadership & team lead roles at Genentech, ImmuneBridge, Guardant Health. Eleven years in industry, and 25 years in genomics, immunology, and oncology R&D. Unique combination of computational + wet lab experience, and drug development know-how. Led cross-functional teams developing immune cell therapies & cancer diagnostics. Experienced manager and team builder who has managed direct reports and collaborations with CROs, academics, and industry partners. Lead and senior author with 18 peer-reviewed publications and multiple patent applications. Ph.D. in Molecular & Cell Biology from UC Berkeley. Postdoc in Computational Biology (cancer genomics) at UCSF.
Neeraj Rao - Business Development Lead
Neeraj Rao has over 20 years of experience in the biotechnology industry. His experience ranges from co-founding a venture-backed consumer genomics startup to senior business development roles at companies including Illumina, Luminex, and Battelle. He graduated with a B.S. in Biochemistry from UC San Diego and received his MBA from the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management.
Join us
We are actively looking for co-founders, experienced scientists, and bioinformaticians to join us. Part-time and full-time opportunities available, hybrid and remote. Please drop us a line along with your CV at the link below.
